Bachmann following the Dean path

Jonathan Martin writes up Michele Bachmann's candidacy as party Mood Ring, and looks to an unlikely Democrat as a model:

Michele Bachmann hasn’t declared yet that she’s running to represent “the Republican wing of the Republican Party,” but that’s all that’s missing from a presidential bid that bears more than a passing resemblance to Democrat Howard Dean’s in 2004.

The kicker of her first ad in Iowa – “I will not vote to increase the debt ceiling” — shows the Minnesota congresswoman is betting that she can find the same sort of success as an insurgent taking on her party over spending as Dean did when Democrats felt their Washington leaders caved to George W. Bush in authorizing the Iraq war.

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“Like Dean, she fits the mood and moment of her party,” said veteran Republican strategist Tucker Eskew.

Bachmann faces the same fundamental problem as Dean: the force powering her into contention – the base’s unalloyed contempt for a president they consider illegitimate – contains the seeds of her undoing.

“[Democratic primary voters] were still so afraid of what Bush could do in a second term that in the end they got pragmatic,” recalled Joe Trippi, who managed Dean’s campaign. “Obama engenders that same anxiety and fear within the Republican base.”